Dissident Voice

April
29, 2003

What
is a journalist’s life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some
of them – frankly – quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my
colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a
Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another
colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American
tank shell was embedded in her brain – a millimetre difference in entry point
and she would have been half paralysed – after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a
round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week.

Samia,
a brave and honourable lady who has reported the cruelty of the Lebanese civil
war at first hand for many years, was almost destroyed as a human being by that
tank crew.

At
the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he
said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank – on the Joumhouriyah
Bridge over the Tigris river – and that the fire had ended “after the tank had
fired” at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the
shell was fired. There was no sniper fire – nor any rocket-propelled grenade
fire, as the American officer claimed – at the time. French television footage
of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The
soundtrack – until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel –
is silent.

Samia
Nakhoul wasn’t the only one to be hit. Her Ukrainian cameraman, father of a
small child, was killed. So was a Spanish cameraman on the floor above. And
then yesterday I had to read, in the New York Times, that Colin Powell had
justified the murder – yes, murder – of these two journalists. This former
four-star general – I’m talking about Mr Powell, not the liar who runs the 3rd
Infantry Division – actually said, and I quote: “According to a US military
review of the incident, our forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come
from a location later identified as the Palestine Hotel... Our review of the
April 8th incident indicates that the use of force was justified.”

But
it gets worse. A few hours before I visited Samia, I was in Beirut with Mohamed
Jassem al-Ali, the managing director of the Qatar-based Arab al-Jazeera
channel. On that same day – 8 April – that the American tank fired at the
Reuters office in Baghdad, an American aircraft fired a missile at the
al-Jazeera office in Baghdad. Mr al-Ali has given me a copy of his letter to
Victoria Clarke, the US Assistant Secretary of State of Defence for Public
Affairs in Washington, sent on 24 February this year. In the letter, he gives
the address and the map coordinates of the station’s office in Baghdad – Lat:
33.19/29.08, Lon 44.24/03.63 – adding that civilian journalists would be
working in the building.

The
Americans were outraged at al-Jazeera’s coverage of the civilian victims of US
bombing raids. And on 8 April, less than three hours before the Reuters office
was attacked, an American aircraft fired a single missile at the al-Jazeera
office — at those precise map coordinates Mr al-Ali had sent to Ms Clarke – and
killed the station’s reporter Tareq Ayoub. “We find these events,” Mr al-Ali
wrote in his slightly inaccurate English, “unjustifiable, unacceptable,
arousing all forms of anger and rejection and most of all need an explanation.”

And
what did he get? Victoria Clarke wrote a letter that was as inappropriate as it
was “economical with the truth”. She offered her “condolences” to the family
and colleagues of Mr Ayoub and then went on to write a preachy note to
al-Jazeera. “Being close to the action means being close to danger,” she wrote.
“...we have gone to extraordinary [sic] lengths in Iraq to avoid civilian
casualties. Unfortunately, even our best efforts will not prevent some
innocents from getting caught in the crossfire [sic]... Sometimes this results
in tragedy. War by its very nature is tragic and sad...”

Pardon
me? Al-Jazeera asks why its office was targeted and Ms Clarke tells the dead
man’s employer that war is “sad”? I don’t believe this. General Blount lied
about his tank crew on the Tigris river. “General” Powell went along with this
lie. And now Ms Clarke – who clearly was told to write what she wrote since her
letter is so trite – does not even attempt to explain why an American jet
killed Al Jazeera’s reporter (just like an American missile was fired at Al
Jazeera’s office in Kabul in 2001).

A
Ukrainian, a Spaniard, an Arab. They all died within hours of each other. I
suspect they were killed because the US – someone in the Pentagon though not,
I’m sure, Ms Clarke – decided to try to “close down” the press. Of course,
American journalists are not investigating this. They should – because they
will be next.

As
for Mohamed al-Ali, he has the painful experience of knowing that he gave the
Pentagon the map coordinates to kill his own reporter. Who was the pilot of the
American jet that fired that missile at al-Jazeera? Why did he fire? What were
the coordinates? Who was the American tank officer who blasted a piece of metal
into Samia’s brain? A day after he fired, I climbed on his tank and asked the
soldier on top if he was responsible. “I don’t know anything about that, sir,”
he replied. And I believe him. Like I believe in Father Christmas and fairies
at the bottom of my garden.

Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign
correspondent for The Independent
(UK), where this article first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy
Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition). Posted
with author’s permission.